Former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s recent call for voters to think again about leaving the EU, echoed in parliamentary debates ahead of the government’s official launch of the process in March, is an emperor’s new clothes moment. Although Blair is now an unpopular figure, his ...

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....Ministers have begun privately admitting that negotiations over the future trade relationship with the EU may not begin until the end of the year, cutting the time for talks to as little as 10 months. Britain agreed in June to discuss the withdrawal agreement first, with talks moving on to trade only once sufficient progress had been made on settling the rights of EU nationals in the UK, the Brexit divorce bill and the border with Ireland. ...

....9bn) in subsidies that the UK receives from the CAP went largely to major agribusiness and food-manufacturing companies, such as Nestlé, Cadbury, and Kraft. Once freed from the flawed CAP, Brexit’s proponents argue, the UK will be able to build a more competitive agricultural sector that better serves farmers and agricultural workers, including by reducing dependence on distorting subsidies. ...

....Of course, you can poke holes in pretty much any top 50 from Greatest Albums to Best Bonds, but there is something instructive and vaguely dispiriting in how the EIU arrives at its safe, clean version of “best”. The Economist’s clientele are exactly the people David Goodhart characterised as the “Anywheres” in The Road To Somewhere, his take on the populist revolt that gave us Brexit, Trump and global politics’ present weirdness. ...

.... It said the used car market represented a significant opportunity and that it had seen a 23% increase in leads generated by its website in the first half of 2017. There has been plenty of pressure on car sales in recent months, with consumers facing political uncertainty from the Brexit vote and Theresa May’s snap general election, while the government also put forward plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 to encourage a shift to electric vehicles. ...

.... The then chancellor George Osborne predicted that unemployment would rise by 500,000 within two years of a vote to leave. The first year following the Brexit vote saw unemployment fall by 157,000. ...

....Holyhead, on Anglesey, is the busiest roll-on-roll-off port in the UK after Dover, with 400,000 trucks a year passing through on the way to and from Dublin. A report by the Welsh assembly on how Brexit could affect ports in Wales says customs delays could have an unwelcome impact, while the route’s two ferry operators, which have previously remained silent on Brexit, told an assembly committee of their concerns for Holyhead. ...

....6%, a typically higher measure of prices than CPI which will be used to calculate the steepest annual increase in rail fares in the past five years for commuters in England and Wales. The July inflation data is significant because it shows higher costs for consumers outstripping expected growth in pay, which the BoE has said could be hindered by uncertainty over Brexit harming companies’ willingness to raise wages. ...

. Britain expects to “mirror” much of the existing EU customs system both during and after Brexit, according to government plans that could prevent Liam Fox from immediately implementing new trade deals. ...

.... And, most importantly, the combination of those first two factors means the crash that began in 2007 cannot be consigned to the past. Today’s politics – from Brexit to Trump and the collapse of centrism – is just one of its products. ...

....6% were doing non-graduate jobs. It said international migrants accounted for an increasing proportion of UK regional job-to-job moves – up from 8% to 24% over the past two decades – and warned the government it needed to be alive to the impact of Brexit on labour mobility. ...

....5% in July, the same rate as in June. Inflation has remained well above the Bank of England’s 2% target – measured against CPI – after starting to rise last year following the Brexit vote, which triggered a sharp drop in the value of the pound and pushed up the cost of goods imported from abroad. ...

.... The Treasury was never wholly in love with the rest of the EU, but it does know where this country’s bread is buttered, and it can recognise a suicide note when it sees one. Among the chaotic group of cabinet ministers who are concerned with negotiating Brexit there appears to be one grown-up minister who recognises the absurdity of it all, and that is the chancellor, Philip Hammond. ...

....Britain will not remain in the customs union during the transitional period planned for immediately after it leaves the European Union, two leading cabinet ministers declared on Sunday. Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, made the declaration in a joint article for the Sunday Telegraph intended to quash speculation that the cabinet is divided over how to implement Brexit and what will happen during the transitional period – or implementation phase, as ministers call it. ...

.... Authoritarianism, Chinese-style, seems to deliver growth and prosperity, a proposition that impresses South Africa’s Jacob Zuma as much as Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, both careless of liberal constitutional constraints. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are grist to the mill – British and US capitalism doesn’t even work for their electorates. ...

.... People employed in tourism cannot afford these houses. Perhaps Cornwall’s perversity in delivering a very large pro-Brexit vote was because there are so many middle-class retired incomers who are putting stress on the social and health services . ...

....David Davis backed a City high-flyer’s appeal against a huge fine for insider dealing a month after accepting a lucrative position at one of his companies, the Observer has established. The Brexit secretary has been a staunch ally of star banker Ian Hannam for many years. ...

....We take a look at the housing market around the country and ask where things go from here. Homeowners have so far escaped the house price crash that some forecasters, including the International Monetary Fund, had warned could happen in the event of a Brexit vote. ...

.... In a survey, it found that the vacuum cleaner was the second most annoying appliance noise in the home, with the washing machine the most irritating. What will happen post-Brexit? “Any future trade negotiations between the EU and UK could potentially cover energy efficiency rules amongst other regulatory aspects, but that cannot be predicted,” the European commission says in statement. ...

....These developments were the result of nearly 40 years of free market economics and what is increasingly seen as the depredations of “hyper-globalisation”. In the now all-consuming British debate over Brexit – a rupture with the EU caused in part by austerity – it is important not to lose sight of the bigger picture. ...

....The reasons why 17. 4 million British people trooped to the polling stations last summer and put their crosses in the leave box have been endlessly analysed, and often crudely carved in half – as if some Brexit supporters were angry about immigration and others fixated on questions of sovereignty, and that was pretty much that. ...

....Lego’s Batman Movie MiniFigures is the bestselling toy so far in 2017, according to NPD analysis. The toymaker announced in December it would raise prices in the UK by 5% in 2017, in response to the sharp drop in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote. ...

.... For the past seven years those holding the reins of power have consistently told us that there is no alternative, that we cannot carry on living beyond our means, and that the greatest gift is a low-tax economy. Those politicians, paralysed in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire and by the wider housing crisis, and distracted by the Brexit agenda, have no answers. ...

.... But with prices for Spain rising due to high demand, other more affordable destinations could come into play. The higher prices could be a factor in particular for British customers, with the cost of their holidays rising due to the weak pound following the Brexit vote. ...

.... “Consumers clearly want retailers and food manufacturers to use good quality British ingredients that are produced to high standards of food safety, but in some prepared foods this is not the case. “As we approach Brexit, shoppers are growing increasingly concerned about the ingredients used in manufactured food and now more than ever want and deserve transparency on food packaging. ...